Now the Black Eagle Gang of Meng Huibao is already the dominant gang force on this pier. All the coolies and porters on the pier, as well as some other businesses, are controlled by their Black Eagle Gang.
Meng Huibao was able to achieve his current status all because Shuguan helped him defeat the Tianhu Gang that day.
Although Meng Huibao did not know the details of what happened in Yihong Courtyard that day, nor did he know the identity of Shu Guan practitioners, he still knew that the Tianhu Gang was destroyed because of Shu Guan.
So when he saw him standing on the street waving to him, the little old man quickly ran over with a respectful look on his face.
"Why are there so many dead? Is there a plague in this area?"
"No, a cargo ship sank on the river the day before yesterday."
"Many of the crew members on that boat were neighbors living in Xiushui Street. In fact, more people died, but in the end, only these twenty bodies were recovered. Alas..."
From Meng Huibao's words, Shu Guan finally understood why there were so many people attending funerals early in the morning.
Looking at the long funeral procession and the mournful relatives of the deceased, Shu Guan could not help but feel a little sad.
But there was nothing he could do about this kind of thing, so he was ready to say goodbye to Meng Huibao, and he had already looked back.
However, at this moment, Meng Huibao sighed again and said:
"I'm afraid there is a monster in this river."
Shu Guan, who had already turned around, stopped, looked at Meng Huibao strangely and said:
"Why do you say that?"
Meng Huibao looked around, then took a step closer to Shuguan and whispered:
"It was a bit strange that the ship sank. It was a steamer with thick iron sheets on the hull. But when the old man and my brothers went down to rescue people, we found that there was a big hole in the bottom of the ship, like We hit some reef."
"The problem is that the bottom of the river is very flat and there are no big rocks at all, so the ship must not have sunk after hitting a reef."
"In addition, most of the people on the ship are good at water, and the place where the ship sank is not far from the river bank. Even if the ship sank, there will always be people who can swim to the shore. But in the end, there were more than a hundred people on the steamer. None of them survived, so this is a bit evil.”
"In addition, the water flow in that section of the river is also very gentle. Even if people died, there must be corpses. But in the end, most of the people's corpses were not found. Old man, I led people to search downstream for more than ten miles. , and no other bodies were found, not a single one. It is impossible for the current there to wash people out so far."
Meng Huibao said, his expression becoming more and more frightened.
The more Shu Guan listened, the more his brows wrinkled.
This shipwreck does sound a bit weird.
"Are all these people fished out drowned?"
Then he suddenly asked Meng Huibao.
"Not entirely. Very few people actually drowned."
Meng Huibao shook his head and said:
"Some people may have been in the cabin when the ship sank and had no time to escape. Some people were directly crushed to death by the cracked and collapsed masts or machines on the ship. Among them were several boilermakers at the bottom of the ship. When it broke, it was smashed to pieces by something."
"When did this happen the day before yesterday? And where did the ship sink? Did anyone see the shipwreck at that time?"
Shu Guan asked again.
"This ship sank late at night the day before yesterday. It was originally loaded with a batch of goods and sent to Shuzhou. Because time was tight, the old man's people loaded the ship for them overnight. After loading, they set off directly. Then after we The river twenty miles upstream from Jingcheng sank. There were mountains on the river bank there, and it was late at night, so I didn't see the specific passage."
"Brother Shu, do you think this is weird? Those corpses that can't be found, do you think they were eaten by some monster?"
Shu Guan frowned and was silent.
... Could it be that there is really a monster under this section of the river?
A monster that can directly sink a steamship is not an ordinary monster, but a real monster!
It's just that if there is such a demon clan under the river in this area, it is impossible for the Seven Immortals Alliance not to know about it.
...Could he be new here? …
These thoughts flashed quickly through Shuguan's mind.
"Lao Meng, apart from this shipwreck, have there been any other weird things happening on the river recently?"
After Shu Guan thought for a while, he continued to ask.
Meng Huibao and his men are at the dock all day long. If there are some strange conditions on the river, they will always notice them.
"Weird things?"
"Well, for example, a large whirlpool suddenly appears on the river, or there is a sudden big wave when there is no wind."
"I have never seen this old man, nor have I heard from my brothers."
……There's none……
Shu Guan frowned.
"But speaking of it, inexplicable shipwrecks like the night before have happened several times this year."
At this time, Meng Huibao said this again.
"Has it happened several times?"
"Yes, shipwrecks on rivers are actually a very normal thing. They happen about ten times a year. Although the reasons are different, the reasons can basically be found afterwards, and it won't be said that all the people on the ship died."
"But since last year, like this time, the cause of the shipwreck was not found, and all the people on the ship died, and many bodies were even missing. There were four episodes in total."
"Then the other three cases were also caused by a big hole being hit in the bottom of the boat?"
"That's not true. In one case, the entire boat fell apart, leaving some debris floating on the river. It didn't look like it would hit something like this. Moreover, that section of the river was also very gentle, and there were no Reefs and stuff like that.”
"There is another ship. The ship is fine, but all the people on the ship are missing. And the strangest thing is that nothing on that ship has been touched, and there are no signs of fighting, so naturally it cannot be an encounter. River pirates.”
"Did all these ships crash in the same place?"
"No, some happened upstream, and some happened downstream. The farthest place is on the section of the river more than a hundred miles away from Jingcheng, and the closest one is on the section of the river that leaves Jingcheng."
"But if there must be something similar about these incidents, they all happened late at night, and there were no people on the riverbanks on both sides."
"When did these weird shipwrecks first occur?"
"If we were together at the earliest, it should have happened in May last year, because old man, I have a nephew from my family who happened to be on the boat that day, so I remember it very clearly."
Shu Guan took a deep breath and then asked the last question.
"Tell me the locations of those shipwrecks!"
Now, he is completely sure that there must be something very strange in these shipwrecks, and there should be supernatural forces involved, so he will go to those places to investigate for himself.
…
Soon after, Shu Guan's figure appeared on a mountain peak twenty miles west of Jingcheng.
This mountain peak is not high. At its feet is the great river that flows eastward. On the opposite bank of the river, there are also a series of low peaks.
This is where the steamer sank the night before.
The river between the two peaks is quite wide and the water is gentle. Meng Huibao was right. Even if the boat was sailing at night, with the wide view here, it is basically unlikely that an accident would happen.
Shu Guan looked at the surrounding peaks for a few times, but found nothing special. Then he jumped straight down from the peak and into the river.
The moment he entered the water, Shu Guan used a water control technique. The river water spread around under his feet, and a whirlpool-like hole appeared directly. Shu Guan jumped into the hole and landed directly on the bottom of the river.
The bottom of the river is full of sand accumulated over countless years. If a normal person stands on it, he will soon fall into the sand.
So Shu Guan used another earth-bending technique, and the sand under his feet instantly solidified as hard as the ground.
Shu Guan stood firmly at the bottom of the river, and then looked around.
The river water is a bit turbid, and the river here is about forty to fifty meters deep. The sunlight above cannot shine down at all, making it difficult to see the surrounding environment clearly.
But Shu Guan's sight was not affected at all.
Because since bathing in the dragon's blood, his eyesight has been far superior to ordinary people, even stronger than most practitioners in the First Realm.
In addition, perhaps because of the dragon's blood he bathed in, his underwater vision was even better than on the ground.
The river water did not cause any obstruction to Shu Guan's sight, and Shu Guan could easily see everything around him.
Meng Huibao was also right. There are no raised rocks under this section of the river, only a flat sandy river bed and aquatic plants growing on the sand.
Shu Guan quickly found the sunken ship, just a few hundred meters away from where he was standing.
Then Shu Guan walked over there.
He still used the water control technique. In order to save his spiritual energy, he separated the river water three centimeters in front of him. Around him, long water plants were floating in front of his eyes, and from time to time there were swimming fish, large or small, from time to time. swimming above or beside him.
If they encounter a bolder swimming fish, they will swim around the body several times, as if to identify what it is.
Under the sand beneath his feet, following Shu Guan's footsteps, shrimps and crabs would rush out from time to time as if frightened.
The world at the bottom of the river is very lively, but also very quiet. Everything goes on silently.
Although the scenery at the bottom of the Yangtze River is not very beautiful, it is still novel enough for Shuguan.
And he soon walked to the sunken ship.
Most of the sunken ship's hull has sunk into the mud, leaving only the part above the deck exposed above the river bottom mud.
Shu Guan jumped lightly, and with the help of the power of the water flow, he easily stepped onto the deck.
A lot of sediment has accumulated on the deck. If there were any clues, they should have been washed away and buried by the sediment by now.
However, there were no signs of damage by any giant creature.
Shu Guan searched on the deck and soon found the entrance to the cabin below the deck.
Then he walked into the entrance. There was still a lot of sand pouring into the entrance. Shu Guan used the earth-bending technique again, so the sand retreated to both sides, revealing a passage.
Shu Guan walked toward the bottom of the ship. With his footsteps, water and sand were automatically avoided. As he moved forward, Shu Guan discovered the bodies of three crew members who were originally on the ship.
These people were either pinned down by something or were already dead beforehand, so they could not escape to the deck.
With the salvage capabilities of Meng Huibao's people, it was normal that these missing bodies were not found under the deck.
And when they were salvaging, the ship should not have sunk so deep, otherwise they would not be able to come down and salvage at the bottom of the river dozens of meters deep.
Shu Guan took a closer look at the corpses. They all died of drowning. There were only traces of a struggle before death and no signs of being hurt by anything.
Not long after, he finally found the hole in the bottom of the boat that Meng Huibao had mentioned.
It was a crack about five meters long and two meters wide. The entire outer iron plate on the bottom of the ship was cracked and twisted and rolled in. It can be seen that the force of the impact was extremely huge.
Shu Guan squatted next to the crack and looked at it for a long time.
In the end, the only thing he could be sure of was that there should be something huge under the river that collided with the steamer while it was moving at high speed, causing the shipwreck.
However, there is no clue as to what exactly hit this steamship. From the crack in the bottom of the ship, there is no clue at all, except that the thing should be very large and extremely hard.
Half an hour later, Shu Guan left the sunken ship.
He has searched every corner of the sunken ship, and apart from the weird crack, there are no other useful clues.
Standing in front of the sunken ship, Shu Guan thought for a moment, and then started walking towards the lower reaches of the river.
Although Meng Huibao said that they had searched the ten miles downstream of the sunken ship several times and found nothing, Shu Guan still wanted to walk it himself.
After all, Meng Huibao and his brothers are just ordinary people. No matter how good their water quality is, they can only dive underwater for a few minutes. Moreover, due to limited sight and other reasons, their search and his own search are completely different.
But Shu Guan's judgment was correct.
He was walking on the bottom of the river, and after walking downstream for a few minutes, he discovered something rather strange.
That is, on the mud at the bottom of the river, there is a straight and long thin pit in the center.
The so-called fine pits mean that the sediment accumulated there is shallower than the ones on the sides.
This thin pit is so long that it can't be seen with Shu Guan's eyes, and it is also very straight. It definitely does not look like it was formed naturally.
Shuguan stood in the small pit, and a picture appeared in his mind.
It was a huge thing. After crashing into the city, the steamship above it was still moving forward. It moved straight along the bottom of the river at a very fast speed. The water it brought up stirred up the silt at the bottom of the river, leaving it behind. Traces of passing.
That's this thin hole.
This is what Shu Guan can think of as the reason for the formation of this thin pit.
Then Shu Guan continued to move forward. Perhaps by following this narrow pit, he could find the "thing" that crashed the steamer.
At a certain moment, Shu Guan suddenly stopped.
Because he saw something in the mud in front of him, something very terrifying.
That's a hand.
A human hand stretched out from under the mud at the bottom of the river.
